Biodiversity refers to the variety of life on Earth, encompassing the diversity of species, genetic variation, and ecosystems. It is widely recognized as a key measure of ecological health and resilience. Framed as an objective—to conserve, enhance, or restore—biodiversity is often reduced to metrics, targets, and indices. This quantification risks hollowing out its meaning, staging biodiversity as an image or checklist rather than a living, unstable reality. In practice, landscape architecture frequently slides toward ornamental ecologies, where biodiversity is performed as spectacle more than sustained as process.
Landscape architecture should engage intensively with conviviality—it has the capacity to unify many issues in current theoretical debates and connect the discipline to the global network of the conviviality movement.
Multispecies Urbanism (MU) concept proposes that cities be designed and governed for the multispecies whole. In her manifesto, artist, infrastructure activist, and researcher Debra Solomon argues that healthy urban environments for humans are inseparable from the flourishing of other species and their microbial consortia. MU treats ecological labour—cooling, water buffering, pollination, soil formation—as infrastructural work […]
An essay on how we push animals into playing roles — from fables and films to renders of biodiversity and art — tracing how these projections tame, abstract, or estrange, and how synurbists and artists unsettle the human–animal divide.
Scientific research into animal behaviour still rests on many deeply ingrained assumptions about what is deemed to be “natural” human behaviour. For example, men—males—are assumed by nature to be more dominant and aggressive than women—females. And if men are violent, then the violent behaviour of other male animals in the wild can supposedly be explained […]
In the U.S., lawns cover nearly 2 percent of the land surface and, as researcher Cristina Milesi revealed using satellite data, “could be considered the single largest irrigated crop in America”—their total area is three times larger than that of irrigated cornfields. The infatuation with lawns runs so deep that, in some cases, failing to […]
The park operates as a life-catcher, drawing in both human and non-human agencies. It is conceived as a public space whose primary function is ecological, where human presence is invited yet not prioritized. Through a subtle modulation of topography, the park amplifies the temporal rhythms of tidal fluctuations, transforming a gently graded surface into a dynamic substrate for biodiversity and spontaneous development.
While introducing softness to the pragmatism of an urban harbour environment, the design employs a sober formal language – orthogonal gabions and descending stair-like structures serve as deliberate counterpoints to the unpredictability and apparent disorder of non-human life processes. In this clear interplay between geometric precision and biological contingency, the park stages an ongoing negotiation between control and emergence, order and flux. It becomes not only a site of encounter but also a quiet manifesto on the coexistence of human intention and ecological autonomy.
– from the award statements
In Copenhagen’s new climate park form radically follows nature Copenhagen’s latest and most radical climate park, Grønningen-Bispeparken, transforms a derelict, barren grass area into a cohesive 20,000 m2 lush, playful, biodiverse, and art-filled urban nature park for all. Grønningen-Bispeparken is not a romantic promenade park but a transformative paradigm shift in urban development, where form […]
In the conversation with the landscape architecture professor, artist and writer Denise Hoffman Brandt, we speak about the morality issues attached to “doing good” while debunking Ian McHarg’s problematic position in Design with Nature. In the conversation, Brandt points out how our assumptions about nature shape our actions, why stewardship is problematic and what landscape […]
Soundscapes The experience of silence and sound in the landscape International Landscape Study Days Thursday 22-Friday 23 February 2024, Treviso and online Friday 16 February 2024, from 5 pm, online preview The 20th edition of the International Landscape Study Days, organised by Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, will be held in Treviso (at the Palazzo Bomben […]
Tim Waterman is Professor of Landscape Theory and Inter-Programme Collaboration Director at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He is Chair of the Landscape Research Group (LRG), a Non-Executive Director of the digital arts collective Furtherfield, and an advisor to the Centre for Landscape Democracy at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He is also […]
Günther Vogt probably needs no introduction in our profession; he has been an important practitioner for a couple of decades now, appreciated globally for his rich, non-linear and adventurous design approach. Initially, his education was more in the direction of botany. He later shifted to landscape architecture by studying in Rapperswil, Switzerland. After his study […]
Today’s most urgent topic for all professional groups everywhere must be how to give our planet and its inhabitants possibilities to survive. Never before has the professional field of landscape architects shifted its goals so quickly, as we have seen only over the last few years. The focus for landscape architecture nowadays is clearly sustainability. […]
Sarah Cowles of Ruderal presents their design for the Betania Garden near Tbilisi, Georgia, which was awarded LILA 2023 Special Mention in the Garden category. We start the discussion with an update on Arsenal Oasis, another LILA-winning project from 2021 (See the presentation). For the Betania Garden, the LILA 2023 jury wrote: At first glance, […]
It is exciting to read “Blue Skies”, the new novel by T.C.Boyle, and at the same time to dedicate oneself to the opulent work of Adrian McGregor. While Boyle’s protagonists in Florida and California are at the mercy of the manifold violent effects of climate change and the reader abandons all hope after reading, the […]
Urban biodiversity? Yes, please! Nevertheless … … Due to the transitional phase of our understanding of nature in the light of the Anthropocene, there are still some important notions, contradictions and misunderstandings that need to be addressed. To do so, we will operate with terms like nature, ecology, biodiversity, landscape, and aesthetics, and we’ll focus […]
»Paradigm shift« has been, for at least a decade now, one of the most used phrases in landscape architecture. We use it mainly to address the need to focus on design with natural processes in mind. This is important as it concerns our core values, attitude towards nature, the understanding of natural processes and the […]
We are thrilled to share with you the interview with LILA 2022 Honour Award winner Gilles Clément. The interview was conducted in Paris in November 2022 by Zaš Brezar and Joost Emmerik. The editors wrote in the award statement: Gilles Clément (1943) is a French landscape architect or better ‘paysagiste’, having a more garden design-related […]
Rotterdam Rooftop Days (Rotterdamse Dakendagen) is an annual festival that promotes rooftop living and emphasises the potential of roofs in mitigating issues of public space, empowering communities, reducing urban heat, increasing urban biodiversity, urban food production etc. It features Knowledge Day, Rotterdam Rooftop Walk, various cultural events and, most importantly, establishes a network of permanently […]
Dr. Stephan Brenneisen from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences has been researching urban biodiversity and roofs for over 25 years. In a video presentation, he talks about his findings. We asked him specifically to speak about what to keep in mind when designing biodiverse roofs. What can landscape architects learn from his extensive experience, […]
In this essay, Zaš Brezar writes about the role of urban roofs in our collective memory. Illustrating the meaning of roofs through a selection of cultural references from films and music. The article is a part of Living Roofs focus on Landezine that is going on in October and November 2022.
Susana Rojas Saviñón and Hortense Blanchard are the driving forces behind Estudio Ome, a young 5-member landscape architecture practice based out of Mexico City. Their first realized project Forest Garden immediately received LILA in the garden category. Besides that, we could easily say that Ome is LILA’s young-talent discovery of 2021. We really look forward […]
Arsenal Oasis is a unique project located in Tbilisi Georgia. It was designed for the Tbilisi Architecture Biennale by an urban design and research studio Ruderal. In this video, the designer Sarah Cowles explains the forces and circumstances that shaped the project. The LILA 2021 jury wrote: Arsenal Oasis is an experimental project that deals […]
Katarina Bajc is a landscape architect, currently working as a researcher at HafenCity University in Hamburg.
